This is what comes from challenging any would-be heroic avatar of the micro-left, supposedly the realm of self-styled “humanists.” Wilson had the temerity to express some deep and considered pessimism about human destiny, and this is what he gets back. As any rational, sober thinker can deduce, none of this is going to end well – as depicted in Iain Stewart and John Lynch’s masterful popular photo-essay The Earth: A Biography, the science of today tells us, definitely, that there will be the death of life on this planet, as there is the death of our life to come, and it will be violent, convulsive, and pitiless.

Street, and the the other folkish shepherds of the slaughtered flock, are fantasists, yet they arrogate to themselves some sort of superior fortitude. There will eventually be no trace of us in the world we see before us, so we need to stop genuflecting before the masters of vain certitude. There is no “People’s Revolution” coming. J. Wilson, you are all right.